you have to be a little bit crazy to survive

Entries tagged with ice

I was part of an elite, armed investigative team going into an ocean-side science station to find out what had happened to it. Only the first part of the station was on land, the rest of which was located underwater, and it was connected by corridors, stairs, and elevators. The first section had bad lighting, papers and equipment scattered everywhere, and finally we started finding bodies as we went into the underwater sections.

The group was split up at some point, and one of the other smaller groups was attacked. A girl survived her initial injuries and we had her resting at the makeshift medical room we set up. My sub-group did some more exploring and had an encounter with another of the things that had attacked her, and they were freakish humanoid forms with weird delicate-seeming spikes and rings of almost barbed-wire shaped protrusions all over their faces.

I don't think I actually managed to kill it, but I was able to clear an area and noticed a map on the wall. It showed a side view of the complex with each area marked as a white rectangle with connections between each section. There were only about four or five sections and it didn't seem to go as far down as it could, more outwards into the ocean water. There was also a second floor section about half-way between the initial entry area and one of the sections out in the water, but I had a feeling the source of the problems was down and not up. I was trying to figure out how to get to the next section further into the water, but ended up going back to where the majority of our people were for the moment.

The girl in the medical room started showing signs of changing into one of the creatures. Stuff was beginning to grow out of her face and she started screaming as the changes became more severe. At some point she calmed down and dazedly suggested she go further into the complex alone, because maybe the creatures would leave her alone now that she was becoming like them. I had a bad feeling she was hurting so bad, she was in fact planning suicide by putting herself at the mercy of the enemy.

She became too disoriented to use for the plan, but one of our big marines was showing signs of changing too, yet he had not been bitten or injured. Did that mean the virulent creature DNA was somehow airborne? His changes weren't as severe, but he had a weird line of almost stitch-looking spines set flush into his skin, that traveled from roughly his chin up across his cheeks to his forehead on both sides of his face. He suggested he should try the plan for getting further into the complex without getting eaten.

My perspective shifted to the marine, and he had already made it much further and deeper into the complex. This area appeared to have been built into solid ground, the shallow end of the ocean floor. I could see a bunch of the creatures ahead, and as they started rushing towards me I thought the plan was going to fail after all. But they slowed down, and then started walking up the side of a ridge of nearby dirt. I had a headset on, and I said over the communications to the rest of the team, "I think they're trying to show me something."

The ridge of packed dirt was taller than me, so it took climbing it to see what lay beyond. I beheld a huge crater, so gigantic it nearly broke my brain and gave me vertigo. But I held my place and tried to figure out what had happened here. The shape of the crater almost made it feel like a ridiculously-huge sphere had once rested here, but really it must have been the end result of a huge excavation. I didn't remember seeing anything like this on the wall map, because a room this size would have dwarfed the scale used in that map. Thus, it was some kind of mega-secret project that had ended up killing a lot of people and turned the rest into aliens.

At the very bottom of the crater I could see what looked like a small exposed edge of dirty, beige-colored metal. Was that part of an alien craft? How come it had not been excavated fully? Had they found other pieces before reaching that one, or was the alien DNA so nasty that it had affected people almost immediately once they started uncovering that piece? Maybe it was some kind of space-microbe on the outside of a ship and nobody had even seen what else lay beneath the dirt.

Back at the command center the team had set up, there were lines of chat on a screen that had been sent from the marine (so much for the audio signal idea). The first two were something along the lines of "Here goes nothing." and "[soldier's name], signing off." Suddenly a new line appeared, in all caps, and it was maybe ten letters smooshed together that indicated the man was still conscious and still at least someone in charge of his own mind.

Then I was Mei in Overwatch, where I was using my ice-blast gun to freeze and kill the alien creatures and they gave experience points every time they died. I was keeping up with respawn so I only had to kill one or two at a time and not a whole room. And finally I woke up.

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Thoughts: I would have liked to have left the end off, but it just kind of shows how doofy the subconscious can be. I had a great, freaky, dark theme going on there, thanks dream! :P I really do wish I could remember what exactly the lines of text were, I almost think part of the last one was "IAMGOOD" but I'm not sure. I also vaguely remember something coming up about depressurization at one point but I am not sure where that fell into the dream and it was most likely one of the more messed up parts of dream logic.

The details are fuzzy now, but basically Pyramid Head kept chasing me and my real life family through various locations. And we knew fully well he intended to kill us all. At one point, we hit very slippery and thick, consistent ice on a roadway, and were somehow managing to slide along on our feet. We looked back to see Pyramid Head ice skating behind us on two of his kind of sword.

The dream kept repeating, sometimes because I'd woken up, thought about it, and went back to sleep. Each time it restarted, we'd try a different combination of things to try and get away easier. The restarts were very annoying; at one point as we'd more or less gotten away. Every time we were back at the start (some sort of vacation spot with our belongings) I'd try to gather up useful things quickly and then get everybody running as fast as possible. I remember carrying at least one of my kid siblings at various points. Their ages seemed to change throughout the dream too.

Also, on some of the restarts, just because I knew what was going to happen, some or none of the others didn't. So it was like, "Look, we're all gonna die if we don't move it so MOVE IT run run run yes out the door no seriously DEATH IMPENDING! MOVE!!!"

I was some sort of female mutant (as in, X-Men) dressed in a sexy skin-tight thing (with a body to match), and I crashed out a window high above a steep, snowy mountainside. I was fighting Wolverine, and as we were pretty much falling down the mountain it was looking like a battle to the death. I landed on my back at the bottom of a very long cliffside, and he landed on top of me, ready to kill with those nasty claws of his.

I stopped struggling and blinked and said something like, "I'm far enough away now... the mind can't control me anymore..." and he realized I'd been under the influence of someone up in the ski resort or whatever was up on the top of the mountain (I really don't remember what it was, just that it had windows as I obviously went through one).

Well, it was good timing I'd broken away from the controlling force at this point, because our battle had started an avalanche that was now roaring down towards us. I asked Wolverine if he could still use some sort of energy shield (that made sense to the dream logic back-plot I guess), and he said yes. I told him to use it now, and I added my powers to his as he summoned a protective force field just above us. I added so much power to it that I passed out, but it was probably the only way to keep us alive at that point. The force field turned to solid ice (related to my power, apparently) and grew so large it covered the entire mountainside around and below us.

My dream perspective switched to Wolverine's, as he was now under this icy shield that had also covered the surface of the ground below him. He had the woman he'd been battling in his arms, and knew he was on his own saving her as she had blacked out. Some of her power had apparently made a nice twisty slide-tunnel through this icy shielding stuff, and Wolverine-me was currently sliding down it. I got stuck in a corner though, and truly unsure of where this tunnel was going, I kicked through the side of it. This put me sliding through a wide but low expanse of air caught under the ice shield. There were spikey, small stalagmites and stalagtites formed of ice in here, and I was worried about hitting them as they looked like they could cause a good amount of pain. (Dream logic apparently forgot Wolverine can regenerate, or he was worried about the girl.)

I decided I wanted to stop this crazy slide down the mountainside, and managed to slide into a larger stalagmite. I tried to kick at the roof of the ice but wasn't getting anywhere. Then I saw very bright light on the other side, and the ice started cracking and chunks of it were pulled away or fell through. Beyond the hole that formed were my other mutant friends, someone who could focus sunlight (the person who'd melted the ice) and others who were using brute force to pull the chunks out. They grabbed one of my arms and pulled me and the girl out.

This seemed like a cross between Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and I'm not sure what else... I was in a town that had a lot of snow, and was very goth. Goth snow? Yes. There was a lot of black ironwork involved too. I was standing in a town square (except it was round).

Suddenly this new guy shows up, in a big float decorated with snow and black iron and blue icicles sticking straight up. He's dressed in a lot of black stuff maybe with bits hanging off, and he rolls down this pole sticking out the front of his float. Of course, with icicles sticking straight up off the pole, he goes through them as well and they go flying and sticking into the general landscape. It seems that this is one way of his taking over the town, because he's the new leader. (Whatever his name was in the dream, he was played by Johnny Depp.)

The float kept moving even after he left it behind to go up a hill to the mansion reserved for the current leader. The pole on the float rammed into the side of the town square and pushed a bunch of ice and stuff up into what was supposed to be a podium on the hill leading to the mansion. Either I or someone else said he was ruining the podium thing, and then we realized it was changing into a big abstract sculpture that was cooler than the podium had been.

So anyways I decide I want to go talk to this leader person, like I have something important to tell him. I think the idea was that I wanted to end up being someone very close to him, and that what I had to say had the power to do that. But as I start walking up the hill, there's suddenly this odd child-sized almost-freaky-puppet-thing that I'm holding with one arm on my hip like I would a child. (It was dressed all in black, very tight clothing.) Apparently this is an after-effect of the leader taking over. I'm not really afraid of this thing, as someone else would be, but I talk to it as we're going up the hill and into the mansion. It seems okay with that.

One of the rooms we pass by has a piano in it, and I walk over and touch some keys. The doll-thing seems unhappy that I leave the piano behind, he pricks me with his fingers wanting to go back (those fingers are sharp, ow!) and I say something like there might be another piano in the new Master's room. So the freakything is appeased for now.

I get to the Master's room and I'm not really sure if the doll-puppet-whatever is still with me, but I'm looking around this big really-goth bedroom and the Master shows up. He's now dressed slightly more formally, like a rich vampire or something, and I don't remember what he or I said but I know we talked about something that wasn't directly related to why I was there. Probably the room decor. At any rate, I started to explain why I'd come...

(This is from back in July on the Chicago trip where I had the alien dream, and I forgot to post it. Oops. Here goes.)

I was a princess, maybe with magic, in a group with others. I was closest to the knight and we were all trying to get out of a castle full of traps. The next thing I remember was that the knight had managed to take a magic sword that had some sort of ice-related power from a dragon's hoard in the middle of this castle. (The sword's hilt and lower end of the blade had some sort of magical inlay, you could see an icy power moving about in there.) The castle was mostly a big huge roundish tower shape that was partly in ruins. My own home castle was just down the road from this place.

The dragon had been away but we could hear it coming back. The knight wanted to get back to the castle fast so that the dragon wouldn't see the stolen sword. Also, the knight didn't have his horse or armor. I realized that the sword had been placed prominently and that the dragon would know right away that it had been taken. It would tear our castle and the countryside apart looking for the thing. So I grabbed the sword and made the knight stand in the middle of the road with me. He was shaking like a leaf. I had my arm around his waist to keep him from falling over. Some knight.

Anyways, I held the sword high in front of us, blade pointing to the sky. The dragon thundered into view and stopped in front of us. It was obviously pissed that we'd taken the sword. But it stooped it's head down to my level and I spoke to it in the dragon language, asking forgiveness for such a terrible transgression. The sounds I had to make were hard on my voice and not meant for humans, but the dragon understood. He wanted to know why we'd taken the sword.

I tried several reasons, from the knight wanting it to the fact that he'd won it in combat (I think a bad guy, maybe even the evil owner of the trap-filled castle, had actually taken the sword in the dragon horde first and the knight had defeated him there). But the dragon wasn't impressed. It was hard to breath and speak the dragon language with the dragon's mouth and nose in my face. Noxious fumes, let me tell you.

Then I realized I should tell the dragon about the quest the knight was going on. It was something so insanely difficult, so futile, that it was pretty much inconceivable anyone would even think of trying. Yet it seems like he had to do it and I believed we had a chance if we took this particular sword. (The quest had something to do with the frozen northlands and probably killing something super powerful but that's all I remember.) Maybe the dragon would let us borrow the sword for the quest. I believed we had to have it to succeed at all and that we would if we had it.

But I didn't get the chance to finish asking (I remember the dragon looking thoroughly shocked and pulling his head back and high up into the air, looking at me like "omgwftyoumustbekidding" as I told him the quest part) because...

I was sitting with Bruce Wayne at a party of some sort, I'd call it a dinner party but it was daytime. The table was round and had a white tablecloth. It was just the two of us at that table, and there was a lamp/chandelier hanging above us. Other people were seated at similar tables around the room.

Suddenly the clown/jester girl who's the Joker's sidekick shows up (I forget her name, she's in Batman: The Animated Series). She hangs a piñata from the lamp above our table and starts yelling "It's piñata time! It's piñata time!" She gets out a stick and is makes like she's going to hit it. This whole time I'm thinking, this is rather inappropriate for a gathering like this, or at least for this moment in the party. Then I notice that there is green smoke or mist coming out of a small nozzle near the top of the piñata.

People around us start couging and dying and crap and Bruce and I managed to hold our breaths in time but still got some of whatever's in the air. We're trying to crawl towards the windows, and make it to one that reaches all the way down to the floor. One of us breaks it (maybe he did, I really don't remember) and we crawl outside. It seems like the gas in our lungs has an adverse reaction to fresh air for a moment, as if that was some sort of built in added-nastiness, so we try not to breathe for a moment longer. Then, while I'm gasping for breath and trying to regain my strength, Bruce goes back in to see if he can help anyone or fight the bad guys or something.

Then the dream shifted weirdly, to some sort of ice-age thing still somehow related to the Batman concept. I remember sliding down a long tunnel/slide inside of a bunch of ice or a glacier, and as I went down it I saw flying saucers and vague alien monster shapes frozen in the ice above (most likely a reference to the movie Ice Age). Then I came out under water, under a fairly thick sheet of ice, and was worried I would drown. Someone broke the ice... I think they pulled me out...

I dreamed I'd paid for and logged into EverQuest again for some reason. The closest zone my female dwarf warrior was near was a plane, and it occurred to me after zoning into it that this might not have been the smartest idea. I turned around and realized that you couldn't zone right back out again. Oops. Come on, I know better than this. The zone point had looked like an ice crystal and the plane I was now standing in was very cold and icy looking. I could see what looked like sharks swimming through the air not far off. Sharks that would murder me in a heartbeat if they got the chance. I tried looking for a group for a few minutes and then asked if anyone had a teleport potion/item for sale or if anyone was teleporting outa this place. Then some random group had an opening but they were debating on leaving the zone, so I still wasn't doing anything.

Then it was like I was really there, and for some odd reason I and this group that I still wasn't in got into what was basically a log ride kinda thing that pulled us along on a track through the zone. Towards the end was a steep incline (hmm no seatbelts) and at the bottom was a buncha water, we got wet and the water wasn't super-cold like I expected, and it was kinda refreshing and fun like at an amusement park. I'm not sure what happened next, maybe I logged out, because the next thing I know I'm playing my male dark elf shadowknight.

I'd last played this character somewhere with a lot of cliffs and snow (not true to reality but that's a dream for ya). So I was running along thinking I'd get a group several zones off (I knew where I was going in the dream even though after waking I have no clue what that was). But then I realized some of the critters around here were dark blue cons (decent experience and doable at my level), and they were troll or gnoll bandits so I didn't have to worry about any faction hits. There should have been some up ahead in a little ice fort but on closer inspection there weren't any there. Hmm, that's odd, I didn't think there were any players around.

Then I noticed both bandits from the fort chasing a troll player. He was yelling for help and I invited him to group and then killed one of the bandits while he killed the other one. Apparently he was just barely high enough level to get experience with me. He thanked me for the help and then I asked him if I could inspect him (look at his armor) and he said yes so I did that and was wondering what the teal armor was that he was wearing. He didn't have a full set. I was trying to ask him if it was the newbie quest armor but I was having trouble typing the words properly. I was thinking if it was crappy gear that I'd log in my storage/selling mule because I was pretty sure I had some decent stuff I could give him since I hardly ever played this game anymore and someone may as well put it to good use.

A strange title for a strange dream. It started in a canyon-ish cave system, kind of like the red rock area in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the hidden temple was at the end of the movie. It seems like I and some companions were hiding, but I don't remember what from. I found this smallish critter that had a really fat body but was very agile, and it climbed all over me. I was worried because it was a wild animal and wasn't sure what it was going to do. It seemed quite taken with me though, and when it reached my face, it started licking my lips like there was no tomorrow. At least it wasn't trying to kill me... it was almost like a mother trying to wash a kid's face. I managed to get the thing off my face and it contented itself with a deathgrip on my hand and licked my fingers instead. Guess it thought I needed a bath.

The next thing I remember was later in the dream, don't know what happened to the licking-happy critter. I was standing in a stone courtyard that appeared to be in disrepair. My brother Jamie was there, and we found a turtle near a round stone fountain that was set in the middle of the courtyard. The turtle was all green, like he had been dyed or painted, and the color itself seemed to inhibit the turtle's movements. Then his shell started to fall apart, it came off entirely and broke into pieces. Either me or Jamie put them back on and they seemed to refit together and begin healing. I think we left the turtle on the ledge by the water, afraid that putting him in the water would mess with his shell.

Then I remember playing EverQuest, as my dwarf warrior, but it was like I was really in the game. I was killing stuff by myself for fun, I remember being in a cave dungeon (I though it was a redone version of Sol B if anyone plays the game and knows the reference) and I killed three orcs. They considered green (easy fight, no experience), light blue (fairly easy), and green (but the last one still gave me experience, which happens rarely in EverQuest). The loot on the first one was a +75 mana necklace that looked like the platinum sapphire necklace in the game. I was very happy to find that, because the odds were good that it was way more mana than the necklaces on most of my caster characters, if not all of them. The second orc's loot was one spikey shoulder pad armor piece, I remember thinking it must be fairly new but it was probably crap even though it looked cool. I took it.

The last orc had a couple more pieces of the funky spikey armor, and also a complete set of white cloth armor obviously designed for a wizard. In fact there was a hat in the set that looked kinda Gandalf-ish, but more like the wizard hats from Final Fantasy XI (or the one Black Mage wears in various FF games). I was thinking the stuff may not be worth hauling around because it would take up a lot of inventory space and I was sure it wasn't worth much... but then I thought I'd make a new character, a wizard. I'd make Kaesora (my multipurpose roleplay character, she's an albino elven sorceress) and she'd be fun to dork around with since there was actually some all-white gear I could put on her (in my stories her normal outfit is white).

So I had just finished deciding to take all the loot when I heard some friends yelling at me, they wanted me to come play with them, so I should meet them at the entrance to the dungeon. I thought I knew the way... I jumped down further into the dungeon and ended up on the goblin side (apparently there were two factions ruling this dungeon, orcs on one side and goblins on the other). Crap! I knew this meant I'd gone the wrong way, and the stuff on this end was higher level.

The dream gets sort of fuzzy here, it seems like I met up with my friends just in time to fight some sort of big boss monster. But now the game changed and it was a quasi-table-top RPG, but we were still actually IN the game. Like, little people moving along a messed up chessboard-like playing area. I knew we were on a table though. Some pieces of the chessboard stuff floated here and there by themselves. We used the squares marked out by the chessboard pattern to count how far we could move each turn. And if you pushed a bad guy off the board and onto the floor, they'd die and not come back.

I made it to the big boss's area, which was half way between the floor and the table (I jumped down to get there). My buddies were trying to make it to me, and I remember Jamie rolling dice and hitting the boss (so he was now part of the game). The boss lost a bunch of pieces of himself, he was sort of a weird 3D bubble man thing. As the other parts of his body slowly came back towards him, all that was there at the moment was his torso. I was now Kaesora, the version I'd been planning to make for EverQuest, and it's like when we started the table-top RPG we'd all chosen mid-level characters instead of starting at level 1, sort of a test run for later games.

I used an ice spell against the boss. I rolled a bunch of dice (and I mean a bunch) and I remember some of them were pink. My total roll was 57. Then we had to look up the rules to figure out what my spell had hit for... and eventually figured out I had to multiply my roll by 105. Dang, nice hit! But right then the boss pushed me off the board, and I fell. I remember hitting the floor and dying, my body got all tingly and faded away and I remember what I could see faded to black. But I wasn't worried because it was like I had several lives (like a video game) or maybe even indefinite lives, and that I'd be respawning on the board, but probably back at the beginning, on the far side of the table from the boss fight.